Fantasy Grounds Unity engine

[JohnQPublic]

Apologies if this has been discussed recently, but I've been out of the loop ....

Is there a rough ETA/roadmap for release of FGU?

"When it's ready."

[lostsanityreturned]

Apologies if this has been discussed recently, but I've been out of the loop ....

Is there a rough ETA/roadmap for release of FGU?

Sadly no, been radio silence for a long time now. I am operating under the assumption that they have realised the mistake in issuing such inaccurate expected beta times to us the last few times.
Hopefully there is steady progress in the background and they aren't floundering in development hell.

It is a shame, but it is what it is. I just wish that some elements of FG3 weren't aging so poorly.

[Mytherus]

So I'm new to Fantasy Grounds....I believe I'm just about at 5 months now since I started using it, both as a DM and a player. (Bought a crap ton of products for it in a short time too lol). Its a fantastic system and thought for me I won't lie I had to really pour some good hours into getting comfortable with it, but I'm glad I did. Still not a master by no means with the system but I can run games now with a degree of confidence that I at least have a clue to what I'm doing. (Could not say that even 3 months ago).

I'm very intrigued by FGU, the features that some have suggested they wish to bring with FGU would be incredible. Now understand this -- I can wait for it. First even though its been in development for several years, I'm new so to me its not been a wait...second, the current system is doing its job...I can host games as DM, I can play games....serves its purpose for me.

However, I always crack a smirk when companies answer development release schedules with "when its ready". That's good -- commitment to quality....but its a statement that has an expiration date on it, regardless if the company wants to have one or not. "When its Ready" is fine for as long as the product its replacing holds up to a satisfactory degree and as long as there's a reasonable flow of information and updates to the intended customer base. (I've got no complaints with either btw) ...however as years ago by ..... "When its Ready" will get stale....customers, especially the ones that stick around forever will grow skeptical.....things can get a little sour at that point. So that's all I have to say to all the "when is ready" conversation (with is spread through many many pages of this forum topic).

Whenever its ready ... (or heck I guess this stuff could be just updated in a release to the current FG platform)....there are frustrations with current FG that I hope gets addressed..... I'm going long here so I'll just say one massive "ask" I have to be updated in FG (dnd5e) .... Automate class features. Perfect example....paladins at a certain point have an aura that provides a bonus to saving throws to him/herself and any friendly target without 10 ft of him/her.....but FG has no automation for this. Its up to the player to remember "Oh don't forgot DM such and such gets +4 to saving throws because of my Aura".....and there's many examples like that. a VTT system should automate the class features. That's probably one of the bigger gripes I have with FG atm.

[Targas]

Fantasy Grounds has alot of coding automated. For this what is not automated Rob2E had created a Effects codings.
Here's a link to the package on DMSGuild to check for you, if that's what you're asking about:
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/226...hor_of_product
On your other Statement, I agree that even as Fantasy Grounds is a quite good VTT, others are emerging which would cover area's which are lacking.
As such it would be good to see another update to stay confident and not let People stray away in search of other Options.

[LordEntrails]

However, I always crack a smirk when companies answer development release schedules with "when its ready".

SmiteWorks, to the best of my knowledge and memory, has never responded with "when its' ready". Community member have.

SmiteWorks responses have always been more along the lines of 'We are working on a new version of FG based upon the Unity platform. But we don't know when it will be ready, and it possible it may never be released. Buy, play and use FG for what it is today. We believe FG is the best full featured platform on the market today and we continue to work on and expand it.'

I'm going long here so I'll just say one massive "ask" I have to be updated in FG (dnd5e) .... Automate class features. Perfect example....paladins at a certain point have an aura that provides a bonus to saving throws to him/herself and any friendly target without 10 ft of him/her.....but FG has no automation for this. Its up to the player to remember "Oh don't forgot DM such and such gets +4 to saving throws because of my Aura".....and there's many examples like that. a VTT system should automate the class features. That's probably one of the bigger gripes I have with FG atm.

SmiteWorks has placed a great deal of automation in the 5E ruleset, but they have said that their intent is to only ever automate about 80% of what can be automated. There are simple too many edge cases to automate everything, and their are always too many ways to play the game to automate everything. And then of course, their is the diminishing returns, automation of some things simply are not worth the development and maintenance resources. Remember, SW is a small company, and their are lots of opportunities for them to work on, they have to prioritize.

BUT, they are always open to suggestions. And the best place to list any suggestion is the wishlist, which they actively monitor and regularly implement suggestions from. https://fg2app.idea.informer.com

[notrealdan]

(More wild speculation about what could someday make it into FG.)

I was thinking about what sort of improvements SW could make to the networking side of FG either with the release of FGU or someday afterwards. Aside from things already mentioned (IPv6 support, improving upon or eliminating the need for port-forwarding, etc.) I wonder if they're doing anything to streamline asset uploads from host to client (maps, tokens, modules, etc.). Specifically, I wonder if they've considered putting something like BitTorrent to work to improve this.

As I understand it right now, when the host shares something new (something not already cached client-side), the host client uploads that individually to each client. So if there are 4 players and a 1MB map gets shared, the host has to upload that 1MB to each player. Most people's upload bandwidth is limited. Using something like torrent should make this faster by also utilizing some of the clients' upload bandwidth. The file would be broken up into many smaller parts, and each client would get different parts right away, and then would be able to send some of those parts to each other, so the host would not have to upload the entire file to every client. The result should be faster loading of assets for all clients, with less load on the host's upload bandwidth.

For most, it wouldn't make much of a difference for a single map or token or something, but I think this could open the door for more efficient use of larger, higher-quality assets. It could also make hosting a game on a relatively slow connection a better experience.

Caveats that comes to mind are that this could make the port-forwarding issue worse if the torrent requires this, and some people may have firewalls that block anything that looks like BitTorrent. It would have to be optional. The host should be able to recognize when it won't work and automatically fall-back to the traditional method of sending each bit to everyone.

I don't actually expect a comment from SW on this. I have no relationship with BitTorrent, but I know that technology is very good at efficiently distributing files. This was just one of those occurred-to-me-in-the-shower ideas and thought I'd throw it out there. On a glance and a google search, I didn't see anything like this on the feature request board and may add it when I have another moment free. In the meantime, thoughts?

[Valyar]

There is no benefit of using BitTorrent. This even more complicates the network part and in Europe many ISP are quite cautious on this type of traffic due to piracy.
If the network operations are multi-threaded and support IPv6 it will be enough. I think someone mentioned that the stack is quote old and single threaded.

[notrealdan]

There is no benefit of using BitTorrent. This even more complicates the network part and in Europe many ISP are quite cautious on this type of traffic due to piracy.
If the network operations are multi-threaded and support IPv6 it will be enough. I think someone mentioned that the stack is quote old and single threaded.

Well, I wouldn't say there would be *no* benefit. There are clear benefits to this kind of tech for one-to-many file transfers, especially when the "one" (the host) has limited upload bandwidth available. As higher-quality assets get used, file sizes get larger and this becomes more valuable. Though I agree it would probably be more complicated than it's worth, and it probably would never be considered worthy of development and support resources.

[arcanjl]

I think we are at a year now from first tease date.
My players are tired of me saying "soon". But I guess it's better than a broken product.

[Targas]

TaleSpire will be ‚soon‘, starting a Kickstarter in a month.